June 14, 2025
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted Tuesday on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center while Newark’s mayor was being arrested after he tried to join a congressional oversight visit at the facility.
Acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced the grand jury indictment in a post on X.
“While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve,” Habba said.
“The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation,” McIver said in a statement.
McIver, a Democrat, was charged in a complaint by Habba last month with two assault charges stemming from the May 9 visit to Newark’s Delaney Hall — a 1,000-bed, privately owned facility that Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses as a detention center.
The indictment includes three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding, and interfering with federal officials. Habba said two of the counts carry a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. A third has a maximum sentence of one year.
McIver's lawyer, former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman, said in a statement that they would challenge the allegations “head-on” in court.
A nearly two-minute clip released by the Homeland Security Department shows McIver on the facility side of a chain-link fence just before the arrest of the mayor on the street side of the fence, where other people had been protesting. She and uniformed officials go through the gate, and she joins others shouting that they should circle the mayor. The video shows McIver in a tightly packed group of people and officers. At one point, her left elbow and then her right elbow push into an officer wearing a dark face covering and an olive green uniform emblazoned with the word “Police” on it.
The indictment says she placed her arms around the mayor to block his arrest and that she slammed her forearm into an agent and grabbed the agent.
